three children and their grandparents? a cop car out of control slamming into a packed restaurant stopping only inches from a firepit and tanks of propane on this american morning. captions by vitac www.vitac.com good morning. it s wednesday, december 28th. welcome to american morning. i m alina cho along with ali velshi. so glad you re with us today. good morning, alina. up first, remember newt gingrich s pledge to keep his campaign positive? forget about it. with six days to go before the iowa caucuses the former house speaker kicked it into slice and dice mode. listen to newt gingrich in the situation room with wolf blitzer challenging mitt romney to man up. and the massachusetts governor was willing to return the fire. mitt romney s the guy running the most ads attacking me, and he s doing it through this disingenuous, oh, gee, i don t control all of my former staff and millionaire friends. it s baloney. he wants to defend his negativity, show up in io
this conservative enacted universal health care. and then there s today s news of newt gingrich s newly discovered fib. the wall street journal uncovered a long-lost newt note newsletter from 2006, and in it gingrich hails romney care back when it was passed. gingrich even said the plan would be a model for the country, which it became, for obama. and that was a good thing. but now all republican contenders are aligned against it. in the real world, that original judgment would mark gingrich as a smart, common sense leader. but out in surreal iowa, it means he s unreliable and not conservative enough. this is funhouse mirror stuff, people. for now we re stuck with iowa. but even as we cover the caucuses, we should be asking ourselves if a major party should really be held hostage to a small group of ultra-conservatives who force ambitious politicians to purge themselves of every sane thought. anyway. that s my two cents. while we re waiting for the hate mail from des moines, let s br
rhetoric certainly is getting sharper. and there are seven major candidates now but after seven more days, will some of those candidates start falling by the wayside on the campaign trail? that s coming up in our strategy session this hour. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. we re here in dubuque. a bit chilly but no snow. it s getting ready, a week from today, the iowa caucuses. you re looking at live pictures from dubuque. this will be the first state to have an impact on the 2012 presidential campaign, and it s all happening here in iowa. the republican caucuses candidate are out on the campaign trail today. they re scrambling to cover as much ground as they possibly can. newt gingrich slipping a bit, but still among the leaders. he s ready to roll across the state by bus. he ll join me live here in dubuque later this hour for an in-depth interview, but let s begin with cnn s jim acosta, he s in des moines, the state capital. iowa certainly very much up fo